


Until My Protector Comes

by end_alls



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Dragon and Knights style AU, M/M, violence and death warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29258100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/end_alls/pseuds/end_alls
Summary: Sora has long been trapped atop the castle tower of black dragon, turned to glass by its fire. What will his knight become to save him?
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49





	Until My Protector Comes

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a shiritori with friends!
> 
> Warning for minor character death/violence

If he was asked, he’d say it was the rush of cold air that shocked a gasp from him.

Even in the castle tower, at the full mercy of the whipping mountain winds, Sora had only known fire each time he’d managed to stir. The black dragon that ruled this domain guarded him jealously, and would never suffer him to rise for long. Sora had wrested himself from slumber and taken up his sword against the jewel-eyed creature more times than he could count, even as each fight ended in heat so engulfing it transmuted his body to glass that melted all consciousness away.

But this time as he woke, there was no heat on the breeze that brushed his cheeks. Only a silver-scaled dragon across the parapet, holding his gaze with eyes blue and burning, and the look of it stole his breath away. Its eyes shone with a tint of green in the fading light, like seaglass washed ashore on the white sands Sora had explored when he was young and prone to abandoning his duties. Had that changed at all? he thought. For how long had he been here, trapped away from his coastal kingdom and the people he loved? He’d kept them all waiting for so long.

The dragon was waiting too, but for what Sora couldn’t tell. In form, it was everything like the one that had been his keeper—large scales like armor guarding its shoulders, chest, and head, all with an opalescent sheen like seashells in summer sun—but its eyes were incomparable, drawing Sora in like the pull of the tide. They held longing and seafire, alight with a question that could rend a kingdom apart. It had always been a question only Sora could answer, because none other had ever had those eyes, and none other ever would.

“Riku,” he breathed. Then louder, voice cracking as he stumbled forward, “Riku!”

Sora had run from this shape so many times, clashed its claws and felt its flame, but Sora went willingly toward the dragon now, without thought.  
But before he could close their distance, after what might be months, years without his devoted knight, Sora tripped over something at his feet, stumbling forward to catch himself on the rough stone.

An armored figure lay curled on his side on the ground before where Sora had been frozen, armor badly blackened as if by fire. His helmet lay beside him like an upturned shell, and a tuft of silver hair not sticky with blood wafted silently in the wind.

Sora couldn’t stop himself from leaning close enough to see his face.

The handsome young knight stared blankly, far beyond Sora’s sight, with mismatched eyes wide and empty. One red as ruby, the other blue as sapphire. Forever set in balance.

They had been the eyes of the black dragon.

Sora turned away from the felled knight, biting back a sob that rose from a twine of relief and grief impossible to unravel. The black dragon had called itself a king, and Sora had told it that any kingdom with such a beast to rule it must already be lost. In the end, Sora’s knight had been the one to make sure it would be.

Sora felt the sea eyes burning on him, and rose his head again. The silver dragon—Riku, his Riku—had come all this way to come no closer, as if Sora might be shattered if he did.

In spite of the cold, Sora felt heat rise inside himself. As if their connection were so fragile, so easily broken. Sora balled his fists and stood, turning to face Riku. He couldn’t begin to understand what he’d been through, what Riku had torn from himself to be standing there across the stone, wreathed in cold blood and scales, but he could understand the reason why.

The loom of fate had woven their two hearts into a tapestry, elaborate and entangled, threads pulling upon each other’s souls no matter the distance between them. Sora had always known Riku would come for him, and yet always hoped he could reach him before he had lost himself in the process.

“Riku,” Sora choked. He had to swallow to keep his throat from twisting. “You found me.”

For the first time, the glint of the dragon’s eyes softened, and Sora could all but hear his partner—for that was what the two of them had always been—say, _Of course._

Sora walked forward, as if toward Riku’s open embrace.

His hands met Riku’s head, and the dragon’s eyes closed as Sora’s gloves delicately traced the edges of scales as if they were his partner’s cheeks, his beautiful white hair. Sora let his eyes drift closed as he pressed his forehead against the flattened armor of the dragon’s nose, holding a portrait of the Riku he’d left behind on the surface of his heart. _Please,_ he thought, _please._

Sora kissed him, tasting the iron of sword and blood. Beyond his closed eyes, the armor against his lips began to shift and soften. Yet even as he felt Riku’s familiar lips shape to his, they remained as cold and tasteless as the dragon’s scales.

Armored human hands found his waist, the strength in them like the black claws that had so often pinned him between king and stone, but Sora breathed deeply enough to press his ribs into them anyway.

Whatever Riku had become to free him, Sora would take it into himself until the sins had been strung between them. He would tie and knot the threads until he’d stitched their stories back together so tightly they could never be parted again.

**Author's Note:**

> [I made fic art.....](https://twitter.com/toppiegames/status/1358793727393689600)
> 
> "Seafire" is what I went with as a stand-in for [St. Elmo's fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire), which is such a cool phenomenon
> 
> I was like "there's gotta be a Mountain Goats lyric I can put on this" and was listening through [The Plague](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgFBFp7seWQ) until I remembered they've got an album literally called [In League With Dragons](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mDUkjJd80gmFKX-rG-lgvamM32aUkVDic) so there you have it.
> 
> I'm on twitter [here!](http://twitter.com/toppiegames/)


End file.
